Brent Brennan confident Arizona Wildcats can 'level up' in transfer portal

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SAN DIEGO — The Arizona football staff will have very little time to celebrate its productive season when the 17th-ranked Wildcats play the SMU Mustangs in the Trust & Will Holiday Bowl Friday evening at Snapdragon Stadium.

When Arizona and SMU are the last two non-College Football Playoff teams to play during bowl season, the transfer portal officially opens for business.

Win or lose, Arizona will have Friday night to soak in the 2025 season and return to Tucson on Saturday and prepare to build its roster for the ’26 season and host official visits.

For the first time since the transfer portal officially launched over seven years ago, the NCAA is implementing just one transfer portal window, a two-week period, from Jan. 2-16, excluding teams that have a month-long transfer portal due to a coaching change.

Previously, there were transfer portal windows shortly after the regular season ended in December and another one in the spring — often during the final stretches of spring practices.

During his news conference on Monday, Arizona head coach Brent Brennan, who's in favor of the one portal window, said the spring period "was always the most disappointing and challenging," especially once revenue sharing was ushered into collegiate athletics and a player who signed a financial aid contract in December could leave the respective program in April.

"You could've paid him a bunch of money and then he can leave after four months with your program, then you're like, 'Oh my gosh, what a bad investment that was,'" Brennan said. "You're trying to make good decisions with how you're spending the rev share and how you do that. There's no way to be 1,000% sure on it."

There's also the risk of poaching players. A team could reevaluate its roster after spring practices, identify a position of need and player agents could have backchannel conversations with coaches and front-office executives, "then it gets a little bit complicated," Brennan said.

A one-time transfer portal window allows teams to "know what we have for the year," said Brennan, and teams develop chemistry and camaraderie in those offseason months during the spring, which was a key factor in the success of Arizona football this season despite a plethora of transfers and newcomers.

"That's going to be a thing that's very, very important to Arizona football: we have to build great teams here," Brennan said. "As we do that, we're going to need time with those players here, on task and together and putting in the work together and going through the tough stuff together. I like it."

Unlike last season, the pitch to play at Arizona is more fruitful than just offering playing time to veteran transfers after a rocky 4-8 season in Brennan's first year at the helm. The Wildcats signed 29 transfers — many of them hailing from FCS and G5 schools, but with playing experience — a key component to their success this season.

Recruiting players to a program that's 9-3 is less challenging than 4-8. Playing time sells; winning sells even more.

"I think that helps," Brennan said. "Naturally, that helps. I think we play an exciting brand of football. All three phases this year have been fun to watch. We also have some outstanding players returning, so I think we have some people that are excited to play with those guys. I also think we have a great recruiting staff."

This will be Arizona's first transfer portal window with new faces in the scouting department. The Wildcats recently hired former Washington staffer Aaron Knotts, who replaced Gaizka Crowley, Arizona's general manager, before taking the same role at Arkansas. Former UA director of scouting Fletcher Kelly is joining Crowley at Arkansas.

Knotts is settling into his new role at Arizona about a week in, after spending the previous 12 years at Washington, in addition to preparing for the transfer portal, "it's like drinking out of a firehose. There's a lot happening in a really short time frame," Brennan said. But "the communication has been really healthy. We're going to be really excited about Aaron as we get going," added Brennan.

Arizona also recently hired new recruiting operations coordinator Andrew Morgan in mid-December. The 21-year-old Morgan is an Arizona graduate was a recruiting assistant under former head coach Jedd Fisch and Brennan, before becoming the assistant director of football recruiting at Idaho. The Vandals recently signed the second-best recruiting class in the Big Sky — the highest-rated class in program history, according to 247Sports.com.

Morgan is a "really sharp, young guy, super thorough and really aggressive," said Brennan.

Knotts, Morgan and the Arizona scouting team will be among the leaders of recruiting transfers to the UA.

"Our coaches are gangster recruiters," Brennan added. "We're good at it. If you think about the team this year, that team was built off a 4-8 record. We did a great job of identification and actually recruiting those players and getting theme excited about playing football at Arizona."

Arizona likely won't have as much turnover as this season. The Wildcats welcomed 60-plus newcomers to the roster at the start of the season — nearly half were from the transfer portal.

After two recruiting cycles at the high school level, the Wildcats will "supplement a few pieces in the portal, which I believe in," Knotts said last week.

"A lot of people build through high school recruiting and that's where you get your building blocks," Knotts said. "It would be naive to not think there's certain pieces or production that you're losing from your roster. … It's hard to sustain your roster and culture by living in the portal. Making it supplemental is a huge priority."

Arizona is expected to return several promising players for next season, including quarterback Noah Fifita, wide receivers Tre Spivey, Gio Richardson, Isaiah Mizell and Chris Hunter and running backs Kedrick Reescano and Quincy Craig. The only running back not expected to be at Arizona in ’26 is leading rusher and current senior Ismail Mahdi.

However, the Wildcats are losing four starters on the offensive line: left tackle Ty Buchanan, left guard Chubba Maae, center Ka'ena Decambra and right tackle Tristan Bounds, albeit the UA coaches are optimistic about redshirt freshman Matthew Lado, redshirt sophomore Rhino Tapa'atoutai and freshman Louis Akpa, among others.

Arizona is also losing its top three tight ends in Sam Olson, Cameron Barmore and Keyan Burnett, who redshirted and left the program. Season-opening starter Tyler Powell suffered a leg injury on the first play from scrimmage and freshman Kellan Ford redshirted this season due to injuries.

Even with the addition of four-start Seattle-area tight end Henry Gabalis, tight end will be one of the offensive positions of need for Arizona in the transfer portal this season, along with offensive linemen and wide receivers, said Arizona offensive coordinator Seth Doege.

Defensively, Arizona is losing seven of its top 11 tacklers, including safety Dalton Johnson, defensive back Treydan Stukes, linebackers Max Harris and Riley Wilson, but the Wildcats are expected to return defensive end Tre Smith, linebacker Taye Brown, safety Genesis Smith, linebacker Chase Kennedy, defensive tackle Leroy Palu, cornerback Jay'Vion Cole and defensive lineman Mays Pese, who all have played a combined 2,427 defensive snaps this season.

Even though the Wildcats are losing defensive linemen Deshawn McKnight, Tiaoalii Savea and Malachi Bailey, Arizona could return a nucleus of Tre Smith, Palu, Pese, defensive end Dominic Lolesio, defensive tackle Julian Savaiinaea and 6-6, 389-pound defensive tackle Zac Siulepa, along with 6-7, 274-pound freshman Porter Patton. Arizona is also adding junior college transfer and former Mater Dei (California) star Ezra Funa, who is on Arizona's roster but redshirted this season.

At linebacker, Brown, Kennedy, redshirt freshman Jabari Mann (who had a pick-six in the home finale against Baylor) and freshman Myron Robinson (who suffered a season-ending leg injury at Cincinnati in November) will be the Wildcats' core group, but Arizona could add an experienced player, especially with Robinson likely sitting out until training camp in the summer.

After losing experienced cornerbacks Michael Dansby and Ayden Garnes, two seniors who transferred to Arizona for one season, UA defensive coordinator Danny Gonzales said finding a veteran cornerback to complement a secondary that features Cole, Genesis Smith, cornerback Marquis Groves-Killebrew, rising freshman Coleman Patmon and redshirt sophomore Gavin Hunter (who started the first two games of the season), among others, is imperative.

The Wildcats will also need to address replacing Australian transfer punter Isaac Lovison and long snapper Avery Salerno, albeit the Wildcats have freshman and former All-American long snapper Broden Molen.

It'll likely be another busy transfer portal season for Arizona football, but more likely than not, the Wildcats will be adding more transfers than players leaving the program — offense instead of defense — after the UA had more departures (35) than additions (29) from the transfer portal last season.

Coupled with the momentum on the field, Brennan said, "I feel really great about the combination of new hires we made for recruiting, along with our coaching staff and our evaluation process and then our recruiting process to acquire players that we think can help us level up and help us continue to build a sustainable, consistent and winning football program at the University of Arizona."

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Brent Brennan confident Arizona Wildcats can 'level up' in transfer portal

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